Session 50 - Star Scourged

Previously, Across the Horizon...
Nothing that happened earlier in the evening is quite so important as what is happening right now.
Perilune, the Astrologian who introduced the party to the falling stars, who so charmed Linnet with her eager enthusiasm and her brilliant blue hair, who they so passionately defended within minutes of meeting, has reunited with the party in the snowy mountains of Cardia.
And now, mere feet from the entrance to the Ondore Family Heritage Inn, within which lies the promise of crackling fires and satisfying brandy, warm beds and pleasant dreams, Perilune stands before a blot on the sky, the stars hidden behind the dark luminescence of another.
We join our heroes as they determine whether or not they will stand beside she who was labeled STARSCOURGE by the very darkness itself...
**
Perilune doesn't dare avert her eyes from the letters etched across the blackened sky. The copper globe hovers above her left hand, the dozen cards spinning it slowly, facing inward. "Linnet, go inside," she says, taking a step back. "All of you. Go inside."
Linnet positions herself two steps behind Perilune's left shoulder, but moves no further.
Yves stares up at the sky, and asks, "Is it true?"
"Tide take you, Linnet, get out of here!" Perilune hisses sharply. "You cannot fight this!"
NO MORE RUNNING
"And you expect me to just watch it wipe you out instead? And possibly the whole town?" Eyes on the sky, Linnet still doesn't move. "We'll talk it over afterward. For now, work your magic. Magitech. Whatever."
Bast slows his dash for shelter down to a jog as he hears voices behind him, then turns back with a resigned sigh, hands flicking through checking his crossbow and other equipment even as he drags his feet on the walk back to where Linnet is standing. "Bets on what this one does?"
Perilune balls her right hand into a fist, though none can see her face to read the emotion that causes it.
The darkness, which has been ignoring everyone but Perilune, seems to take notice of them now.
The light bends differently around the absence of the stars, shifting into something that approaches a physical form, a snout capped with horns at the top of its head, a long serpentine neck, a thick body with four legs, wings spreading out wide enough to encompass the village, a whiplike tail that stretches out the length of its body again.
Words scratch themselves within its wings.
PERISH IN HER FIRE
The dragon -- for that is what threatens Uhja, a flash of information and a name streaking through Orrey's brain -- turns its attention first to Yves, lashing out with that terribly long tail, and then a purple flicker of light surrounds Linnet.
"Captain, you're welcome to give a stern lecture to my crisped remains after this," Linnet says.
"I have some que--" Yves emits a gasp as he's flung into the air by that tail swipe. He lands soon enough, though. On the lit tree. Somewhat inside the tree, even, with that much force, and not all those snapping sounds come from the branches.
Orrey sees Yves getting lashed by the dragon's tail. The sense of foreboding that had followed him has begun to be realized. He focuses on the watch in his hands, and a green glow emanates from it and wraps Yves up in an aura of light.
From the edge of the square, a sound no one present has heard comes creeping from the street... Isa is singing. It's a song of house and crown and duty, the sort of song cadets sing in drinking halls. The sort of song that relies on a lot of voices singing it, in order to cover for the people who can't carry a tune all that well. People like Isa. Yikes. When she comes fully into sight she pauses her song to drain the last swallow from a narrow glass bottle, and only then does she see the scene at the center of the square. "The fuck?" she asks, face confused. "The FUCK!" she says again, louder and angrier. The bottle flies off to crash somewhere in the darkness, and she arms herself mid-stride as she heads in to join the fray.
"Welcome back! We saved the fun bits for you." Bast sights down his crossbow, not otherwise acknowledging Isa's sudden reentry - then seems to change his mind and pulls a canister from his pocket, yanking a cord that seems to trigger a tiny burst of smoke which promptly becomes a smoke trail arcing towards the dragon. The smoking canister lands in the snow, seeming temporarily smothered - then a flash briefly lights the dragon's head up from below, and the hole in the snow channels the smoke into an upward burst of blinding sparks and noxious fumes.
Perilune drops to a knee, touching her globe to the top of the snow, and a circle spreads out with her at the center until it surrounds the entire village of Uhja, sparkling with the faintest pinpricks of stars in a dome that encompasses the full village.
"I'm...fine, apparently?" Yves shouts from the tree. He struggles upward enough to stick his head out more than his feet, eyeing the ground below. Right. That's probably a distance an athletic bun could climb down from easily enough. Simple. "Could we all sit down and talk this out," he shouts, toward somewhere between the dragon and Perilune. "If we could--oh squash borers," that last as his thrashing sends the tree listing dramatically sideways.
Raising the crossbow again, Bast glances at the weird light surrounding Linnet. "...what's with that?"
"The hell if I know, but..." Linnet slams her left fist into her right open palm, and a shell of ice-colored light rises from the ground and closes around her. In a bare second it's nothing but a shimmer, but the violet light shimmers a little differently, at least? Hopefully it'll do more than the snowball she throws at the dragon, anyway.
The purple light shimmers twice, and then a beam of purple energy blasts out from the dragon, hitting Linnet and anyone in melee range of the sylph, the addition of multiple bodies in the target area spreading the damage out between them.
Orrey cradles his watch in his hands again as green light glows around himself and his friends who just got blasted. Then, Orrey adopts a familiar stance as he launches a spinning clock at Isa whose hands rotate faster and faster as it settles behind her, haloing her in purple light.
The dragon flaps its wings out wide, and the ground trembles and shakes, a localized earthquake hammering everyone in contact with the ground (sparing Yves, who is just thrown around a great deal). Red lights then circle Yves in the tree and Isa on the far side of the dragon, pulsing, counting down, threatening.
Isa is at full steam, and when Orrey's spell settles around her she shifts into overdrive. Her first stroke is low and long, slicing across tendons in the dragon's claws, weakening its blows. The second is a heavy overhand chop, sinking deep into whatever passes for meat.
The second swing sinks deep into the sudden fog that obscures, the enemy immune to a second straight melee attack.
The red light surrounding Isa shines brightly, and then a torrent of red energy whips out at the fighter.
Isa throws her gauntlet up to block, and a series of jointed flanges click-clack out with the gesture. They glow dull red as they deflect the blast, but hold; she comes through unharmed. She spares a moment's attention to give Bast a half-nod. "Field test is good!"
The flare of red light catches Bast's attention, briefly distracting him from the shot he's lining up. He takes a moment to yell "Yves! Stay away from us!" before sighting on the dragon's nose...and watching the bolt hit at an angle and ricochet off into the dark winter sky. He gives Isa a quick thumbs-up before scrambling to reload.
Perilune sweeps her arm out, the globe spinning as a revitalizing light shines through Bast, as she ducks away from the tree holding Yves. Her eyes are frantic and her mouth is set in a grimace.
"Doing my best," Yves shouts back, trying to fight his way around the edges of the swaying tree to balance it out. The ornaments are all jingling like the laughter of happy children who haven't seen what's happening to this tree yet. He addresses the sky as he fights his way past a branch: "Cinnabar, come on, talk your, uh, your cousin into settling down for a bit, please? We can work this out, probably, in some way that doesn't end with Isa stabbing a relative of yours to, I don't know, death, deconstruction--" The end of his rapid conversation toward the sky is muffled by the majestic creaking of the tree as it finally decides on a direction to fall. On top of one viera who misjudged the balance.
The dragon snaps its head around, its nostrils flaring as the shimmering green outline of Cinnabar shines around Yves, the galaxies in its eyes following the memory of the prancing rabbit.
Yves is then shot with a red beam of light.
"....ow," says the fallen tree. Or the viera beneath it.
A rather singed and no longer glowing Linnet dunks the end of her braid in the snow to snuff out a spark. "Dammit. Well, that could have been worse." She kisses the ends of her fingers and blows a puff of gingerbread-scented air over herself, Bast, and Orrey, then tosses another snowball at the dragon, which sizzles a very little bit more.
Orrey shakes his head as he watches the battle, seeing the results of the creatures strange ability. He again flourishes the watch, concentrating on the clock image that rests gently on Linnet, whirling more and more rapidly as she begins to move faster and faster.
THEY CANNOT STOP ME
The words spell themselves out inside the wings as the dragon looms larger over the toppled tree and the scattered allies, their defensive efforts keeping time with the dragon's might, their offensive efforts doing little to slow its approach.
YOU HAVE DESTROYED ENOUGH OF OUR LIVES TO ADD THEIRS TO YOUR TALLY STARSCOURGE
Perilune squeezes her eyes shut, but opens them. "I will defend them against you, and I will defend all of them against you!"
Another flap of the dragon's wings, shards of ice ripping through the entire village.
A red light begins to circle Bast.
YOU WHO HAVE BUTCHERED THE STARS
LET THEM HAUNT YOU IN THE REST OF YOUR DAYS Orrey projects the green light of life once again over Isa, his eyes glowing green as he sees the end of his first Prediction.
Isa braces against the icy onslaught, but the impact is enough to spin her sideways regardless. Fragments of ice shatter and fall away as she makes her response, her sword cutting in precise slashes that leave vulnerabilities deeper than the physical. "YVES!" she yells as the blow strikes home. "AIM FOR THE NEXUS"
"Yoshu's. Frozen. Codpiece!" Bast seems to shake off the last of the effects of the dragon's icy blast with a snarl of more rage than seems like it should fit in one moogle, and breaks off reloading to dash off to the side, taking his red aura away from the rest of the party.
"WHO DO I NEED TO HIT TO MAKE SOME ANSWERS FALL OUT AROUND HERE?!"
For now, the answer seems to be the dragon's left wing - but running spoils his aim, and the shot goes wide.
The snow underneath Bast erupts into a volcano of shredding winds.
The sky seems to coalesce around Bast, the safety of the darkness enveloping him. "Leave them alone!" Perilune shouts into the night.
"I am trying to help," shouts Yves, ripping himself up out of the toppled tree. He's bedraggled and has at least three ornaments tangled up with his ear piercings, to say nothing of the tinsel, but he looks remarkably undamaged otherwise. "I don't want to hurt you, but if you won't stop, and you won't listen to Cinnabar, I /will/." He flicks his fingers through the air, sparks trailing them merrily against the night sky, and then sends the lightning out. Right into that spot where the dragon's magical defenses have already been disturbed. "LIKE THAT."
For the first time, the dragon roars, in pain, in frustration, in anger.
As Orrey's Haste settles in, Linnet shakes herself like a bird settling its feathers, then takes a deep breath. She screams as she punches her fist into her palm again, settling the same ice-blue light over herself, then...pulls out the scimitar that generally rests forgotten beneath her braid. With a wild whoop somewhere between rage and uncontrolled laughter, Linnet runs up to the dragon and stabs it in one clawed foot.
Orrey watches Linnet run up to the dragon with wide eyes, surprised! He quickly adjusts his thinking and sheathes the knife he was about to throw, holding up his pocketwatch in as menacing a manner as ever a watch has been held. A tiny pitch black sphere in front of him flies outward towards the dragon, expanding into a massive ball that implodes on the creature.
NO I AM MIDGARDSORMR THE FATHER OF US ALL
YOU WHO HAVE MURDERED MY CHILDREN
WATCH AS YOURS MEET THE SAME FATE
"WE HAVEN'T MURDERED ANYBODY!!!" Orrey shouts in frustration.
The dragon coalesces further, brown scales streaked with blood and graying flakes.
Eyes wild with rage and sorrow.
And then Midgardsormr is a furious wave of energy, a never-ending assault on the groundbound sylph by Perilune's side.
A purple light circles Orrey.
Orrey eyes the circle warily. "Purple, gather..." Orrey says to himself.
The darkness surrounding the village begins to coalesce around Midgardsormr's mouth, drawing in for some sort of nightmarish attack.
Linnet may not be flying right now, but a storm of blowing braid and kicked-up snow is almost all that can be seen as Midgardsormr's head descends toward the mage, and the mage...just isn't there. And then just isn't...somewhere else. Finally, when a blast of truly ugly dark green light spews forth from the dragon's mouth, Linnet crouches into a ball beside his foot and snaps up her ice-light shield. Then, realizing discretion is the better part of whatever the hell just happened, the apparently unscathed sylph yanks her scimitar out of the dragon's foot and runs faster than she's ever run before.
Her hair is streaming in every direction at once, her scarf is threatening to tangle in her earrings, her boots are coming untied, and she's laughing like a woman gone completely mad.
"What did you do?" Isa asks in the vague direction of Perilune, but doesn't seem to expect an answer. Instead, she steps in underneath the dragon's throat, her sword sweeping upwards....and against the grain of the scales, sweeping a patch of them off to tinkle like falling snowflakes against the ground, leaving a bare and vulnerable patch.
Bast, apparently even more furious after missing again, spits "Hey, Midgarsomewhere! Got something with your name on it here!" back at the dragon.
He pauses briefly, staring as Linnet charges in and stabs it - and apparently escapes without a scratch after the dragon does everything it can to kil her? - before raising his crossbow again and taking aim at the patch of skin exposed by Isa's attack.
That one hits home, punching through the skin with a burst of blood in its wake.
"FEEL LIKE TALKING TO US YET, ASSHOLE?"
Bast doesn't wait for an answer as he sees the light come in around Orrey. As he runs back towards Perilune, he has enough breath to spare for "Linnet out, Orrey in!"
Orrey looks at Bast, looks at the purple light on himself, and nods.
Perilune slams the card-spinning globe on the ground, and the entire village bursts into constellations.
Midgardsormr bursts into constellations, too.
When the stars fade, a mask remains.
A small dragonet mask, tiny fractures connecting its eye sockets and its jaw.
will they protect you when they know your truth Isa kneels down and scoops the mask out of the snow with her armored hand. There's a second, just a second, where it looks like she's considering squeezing it into dust.
"Perilune, what is it talking about? You owe us some answers after THAT." Orrey is pissed. Less pissed than just before she healed everyone, but still pissed.
"Oh gods," Yves says. He stands very still. "What did she do? What did /we/ do? Are we--did I--"
Perilune is shaking, crouching down on one knee, her crystal-blue hair covered in flecks of snow and starlight. "I know. I know I do. I'm sorry. It wasn't supposed to be like this."
"How was it supposed to be?" Bast asks.
Linnet has managed to gather her wits enough to stand beside Perilune and catch her breath. "All right, everyone, we don't need to have this conversation out in the snow. In fact, I'd really rather we have it somewhere with a few more closed doors between us and the entire town. ...like, maybe not while the Warriors of Lightheadedness are in the inn, but we may not have that option. So can we please do as we were trying to do in the first place, get into the damn inn, get away from the scene of our having maybe broken the village's giant holiday tree, get warm, get a bit more privacy, and then have a giant argument about whatever in the flaming fire tornadoes just happened?"
"Not in the public room," Isa says. "We'll have to eat the cost of beds; calling the ship in the dark's a bad move."
"We can afford it for one night. It was past bedtime even before we got ourselves into this fresh mess," Linnet says. She's not laughing anymore, but Linnet is still trembling and swaying somewhat on her feet, and the scimitar has not made its way back into its sheath. (The scarf is also not untangled from her earrings, so all of this is coming out slightly muffled.)
Orrey walks a little ways away from everyone and pulls out his sketch pad, drawing the symbol for Turon, the crescent moon and half of an eight pointed star. He lofts the piece of paper and it rises of its own accord into the sky. He stands looking upwards at the Great Beyond, and asks a question: "Did defeating Midgardsormr destroy him for good?"
"Nice work with the sword, by the way," Isa asides to Linnet. "But next time, focus on slashing rather than stabbing; the blade is more efficient that way."
"I don't think talking works," Yves says. There are wet patches beneath his eyes, not particularly visible from a distance as he struggles his way out of the fallen tree. "I'm going to bed."
Bast takes a deep breath, then another. "Yeah, I'm not risking the ship for a pickup tonight. Let's get to the inn, and think of what we say when the village comes asking for explanations."
"Efficient? I...wasn't really thinking of efficiency. I wasn't really thinking at all, to be honest. I just kind of...did it." Linnet stares at the scimitar like she doesn't recognize it. "Let's go fall over and get our stories straight over breakfast."
"By breakfast they might decide to burn the inn down around us, just in case."
Orrey smiles and bows his head in thanks in response to Turon's answer.
"Peri, you're coming with us, no arguing. I've got some dry clothes you can borrow if you need extras."
"I have clothes, thank you," Perilune says automatically, staring straight ahead. She then catches herself, and nods more, listening to Linnet's words. "I will pay for my own room regardless, as well. Thank you all for your assistance."
Orrey walks over alongside Yves and reassures his friend, "We didn't destroy Midgardsormr. I hope that helps. I think it's like with Cinnabun. We fought to bring him into the mask." Orrey says. "You could still try talking to him, maybe." Orrey looks up at his friend hopefully.
"I think I'm on the wrong side, again," Yves says softly to Orrey. "Maybe only tonight? I hope only tonight. But I couldn't let--the way it was going after all you--I thought calling Cin would help, but--" He draws in a deep breath. "I'm made of nothing but coffee and nerves and I have a headache. I need to sleep."
Perilune heads into the Ondore Family Heritage Inn, drawn tightly in around herself.
"Heroes of godsdamned legend, fighting epic battles for theater props." Bast grimaces slightly - it might have been intended as a grin. Might even have come off as one, a few hours sooner.
Isa snorts, falling into step with Bast. "Heroes."
Bast keeps step with her. "Isa, how did we sink so low from that train ride?"
"You're on our side. That's not the wrong side at all." Orrey looks sadly up at Yves' distress.
"I'm honestly afraid the answer is Destiny," Isa says, capital audible. "And that's going to suck."
"Shit. Want to sell tickets?" Bast replies.
Rooms are acquired with little fanfare, Varen only asking "is everything okay" and "do you need anything" as he takes everyone's gil. The group separates into multiple smaller groups for the night, and one by one, everyone falls asleep, somewhere between exhausted and traumatized.
Orrey wakes in the middle of the night, pocketwatch never far from his hand. A quick scan of the room says that everything is all right; and then he doubts his own eyes, or perhaps his memory, because he could have sworn that, at the foot of Yves's bed, a small emerald rabbit had been sleeping.
Exhaustion takes over, though, and Orrey slips back off to sleep.
End session 50.